One Man and the missing Camels?

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Pathway2

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We have a problem. Camels didn’t arrive to Israel until centuries after Abramham. Even if He got them from Mesopotamia, we need the proof of what remained of those camels.
 
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Well, that’s a lot of area to dig up looking for camel skeletons. But if that’s what you want to do with your life, go for it!
 
Abraham himself traveled from Mesopotamia to Judea. Did you check to make sure he didn’t travel riding a camel?
 
Uhmm so did Abraham come from Israel or went there?
Even the “wikipedia” puagh! states that he was born in Ur Kaśdim which is located in Southern Irak.
Where did you say he got his camels from?
 
Where is the ‘proof’ that Camels did not arrive until centuries later? Who asserted this? How could they possibly know, and what was their agenda?

Demanding proof can be corrosive and runs counter to faith.
 
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Pathway2 said:
We have a problem. Camels didn’t arrive to Israel until centuries after Abramham. Even if He got them from Mesopotamia, we need the proof of what remained of those camels.
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Why? Abraham got where he was going. He used camels. Or he used mules or horses, or he walked.
If he used camels, they reproduced or they did not. Either way, why does it matter?
po18guy said:
Where is the ‘proof’ that Camels did not arrive until centuries later? Who asserted this? How could they possibly know, and what was their agenda?
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Also what po18guy said.
 
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I give up. What year was Abraham?

image547.jpg


“Bactrian Camel with a Harness– Metropolitan Museum of Art – c. late 3rd-early 2nd millenium BC.”

Is the farthest back ten seconds of Google brings up.

Second-furthest is “two gods riding a camel” on a cylinder seal, c. 1800 BC.

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This one is a prehistoric petroglyph from Mongolia.

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Yeah, Mongolia is about 3,000 miles from Iran… So here’s a camel petroglyph from Saudi Arabia…

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While I was trying to figure out if it dated to Late Pleistocene or Holocene or Bronze Age or what (it turned out it was Thamudic), but I came across this bit–
The dromedary camel arrived in south-eastern Arabia about 5000–6000 years ago (Uerpmann & Uerpmann 2002). It is absent in late prehistoric art but is often depicted with Thamudic inscriptions (Parr et al. 1978; Khan 2007).
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which was interesting.

There was comment about the Egyptian petroglyphs near Aswan and Gezerieh-- two or three minutes spent on GIS didn’t turn up anything besides the sketches depicting them, rather than the original material, but it looks kind of like this–


–and is dated to the 6th Dynasty in Egypt, which we currently think was sometime around 2345-2181 BC.

There’s a laden dromedary from a 1st Dynasty Egyptian tomb at the Berlin museum–

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—and mention of a camel burial dating to 2400-2200 BC in a house in Mari. (Because wild animals totally wander into people’s houses, lay down, die, and the people come home and say, “Huh, we’d better bury that.”)

But since I have no idea what year you think Abraham lived, I don’t really know how far back you want us to look.

Suggestions?
 
I am not dismissing that trouble is what would have happen after he arrived in Judea?
 
Pathway2 said:
I am not dismissing that trouble is what would have happen after he arrived in Judea?
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What would you expect to happen? The Hebrew word gamal (camel) commonly occurs in the OT in three contexts: Livestock considered as property; a means of transport; camel meat not kosher. Examples:
• Livestock.—1 Sam 15:3, “Kill all the men, … the cattle, the sheep, the camels, the donkeys.”
• Means of transport.—Gen 24:61-64: Rebecca arrives riding a camel.
• Not kosher.—Lev 11:4, Deut 14:7, the camel, the rabbit, and the hyrax.
Jeremiah 2:23 compares the sins of Israel to the behavior of a female camel on heat, but here the word is bikrah, a young camel (fem.)
 
…He died at Hebron?

I’m having difficulty. Are you worried about Gen 12–
14 When Abram came to Egypt, the Egyptians saw that Sarai was a very beautiful woman. 15 And when Pharaoh’s officials saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh, and she was taken into his palace. 16 He treated Abram well for her sake, and Abram acquired sheep and cattle, male and female donkeys, male and female servants, and camels.
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And you’re worried about Pharaoh not having camels to give to Abram?

Or are you worried about Gen 24?
Abraham was now very old,…
10 Then the servant left, taking with him ten of his master’s camelsloaded with all kinds of good things from his master. He set out for Aram Naharaim and made his way to the town of Nahor. 11 He had the camels kneel down near the well outside the town; it was toward evening, the time the women go out to draw water.

12 Then he prayed, “Lord, God of my master Abraham, make me successful today, and show kindness to my master Abraham. 13 See, I am standing beside this spring, and the daughters of the townspeople are coming out to draw water. 14 May it be that when I say to a young woman, ‘Please let down your jar that I may have a drink,’ and she says, ‘Drink, and I’ll water your camels too’—let her be the one you have chosen for your servant Isaac. By this I will know that you have shown kindness to my master.”
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And you’re worried about a random girl not being familiar enough with camels to volunteer to water them?
 
The estimated time for Abraham is somewhere between 1700 BC and 1500 BC. So yeah, there were camels around. They would not have been his main herd animals, but they probably got used for packing the household items, like tents, rugs, and chests of belongings.
 
Actually I think the correction would be Isreal. Anyway. Are you suppose the view the Abraham story as historically accurate?
 
Pathway2 said:
We have a problem. Camels didn’t arrive to Israel until centuries after Abramham. Even if He got them from Mesopotamia, we need the proof of what remained of those camels.
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News flash - some of the facts presented in ancient scripture are inaccurate. This should not be troubling to Catholics (or Anglicans, as it appears you are), as we do not hold a “fundamentalist” or historical inerrancy view of scripture.
 
Okay. So you don’t have to have this literal view? How could you trust it to be true?
 
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